[Mb-civic] Bush's flim-flam on faith - Derrick Z. Jackson - Boston Globe Op-Ed

[William Swiggard]

Bush's flim-flam on faith

By Derrick Z. Jackson  |  October 15, 2005

BY THE TIME our holy-roller-in-chief leaves office, we will really be 
confused about the role of religion. That is how President Bush wants 
it, starting with his faith-based initiatives that were merely an excuse 
for gutting government programs. In recent weeks, this blessed agenda 
has bumped up against unavoidable hypocrisy.

The most obvious is the Supreme Court. Bush named John Roberts to the 
court under a massive smokescreen. In July, White House spokesman Scott 
McClellan said, ''Judge Roberts has said in previous testimony that 
personal beliefs or views have no role whatsoever when it comes to 
decisions that judges make."

The ''no role" ploy was meant to fend off liberal critics and hide as 
much as possible from them about Roberts's personal feelings in his 
Senate hearings. But when Bush's new pick for the court, Harriet Miers, 
was criticized as a lightweight conservative by some on the far right, 
the White House performed what Bush himself called an ''outreach 
program" on Miers's religious bonafides.

James Dobson of Focus on the Family said Karl Rove, Bush's top political 
adviser, told him that Miers is ''an evangelical Christian" who attends 
''a very conservative church which is almost universally prolife." Asked 
about his ''outreach program," Bush said, ''They want to know Harriet 
Miers's background. They want to know as much as they possibly can 
before they form opinions. And part of Harriet Miers's life is her 
religion."

The assertion of Miers's religiosity to buoy her nomination serves to 
highlight an even bigger conundrum. Today, the people of Iraq vote on a 
new constitution, one that Bush praised in August by saying ''Iraq will 
have a democratic constitution that honors women's rights, the rights of 
minorities." This conveniently ignores the fact that the Iraqi 
constitution says right up front that Islam is the official religion of 
the government and is a ''fundamental source of legislation." Many human 
rights watchers worry that such language, given how Islamic law is 
sometimes applied by men, will end up being used to oppress women.

Thus at home, Bush uses religion to hint broadly to supporters who want 
to do away with abortion rights that Miers is safe for a seat on our 
Supreme Court, even though the United States is a nation where the vast 
majority of Americans think abortion in varying degrees should be an 
option. Only 29 percent of Americans want to see the Roe v. Wade 
decision legalizing abortion overturned, according to both a Pew poll in 
July and a USA Today/CNN/Gallup poll in June.

The manipulation of religion is even worse (given the fatal 
consequences) for his adventures abroad. When journalist Bob Woodward 
asked Bush if he consulted with his former president father about 
invading Iraq, Bush said, ''He is the wrong father to appeal to in terms 
of strength. There is a higher Father that I appeal to."

Last week in an address before the National Endowment for Democracy, 
Bush once again wrongly and willfully conflated Iraq, where no weapons 
of mass destruction were found, with 9/11, Hitler, Stalin, and Pol Pot. 
In doing so, he decried the ''evil" of terrorists who misuse religion.

''This ideology is very different from the religion of Islam," Bush 
said. ''This form of radicalism exploits Islam to serve a violent 
political vision: the establishment, by terrorism and subversion and 
insurgency of totalitarian empire that denies all political and 
religious freedom."

Bush added, ''Like the ideology of communism, our new enemy teaches that 
innocent individuals can be sacrificed to serve a political vision. And 
this explains their cold-blooded contempt for human life."

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2005/10/15/bushs_flim_flam_on_faith/
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